


Tan Leather Seats

by Marginson



Series: 1990 Plymouth Voyager [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 00:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14461674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marginson/pseuds/Marginson
Summary: Hiding at Hal Gates' house while Silver starts to recover, Flint comes to understand more about the man, reaches out to his contacts, and gets to work repairing a car that's becoming more than just a car.





	Tan Leather Seats

**Author's Note:**

> You probably want to read parts 1 and 2 before this.

 

 

 

There’s a short driveway lined with trees, behind a wall covered in honeysuckle.

Flint parks the van, unbuckles his seatbelt and turns to Silver in the passenger seat.

“Wait here a minute,” he says.

He half-pushes, half-kicks his door open because his sling gets in the way, and gets out of the car with all the grace of an albatross on land. The white gravel scrunches softly under his soles as he strides towards the door of the house.

He has his free arm raised to knock - five rasps, a beat, then two in a distinct rhythm, as agreed - when the door opens suddenly and he almost punches the man behind it in the eye.

“Fucking hell, Hal, the code !” he grumbles.

Hal just pats his shoulder with a smirk on his face that Flint has always _absolutely_ hated.

“There’s no other engine in the entire county that would make such a wretched sound. I could hear you from the next street over,” he says cheerfully, and walks past him.

Flint turns. Silver, of course, hasn’t waited for his permission to get out of the van, and is now busy introducing himself to Hal Gates with the same easy charm Flint noticed when they first met, in an apartment filled with cigarette smoke that seems like it belongs to an entirely different lifetime.

 

* * *

 

They get settled in two small adjacent rooms on the ground floor with whitewashed walls and dark wood floors that still have small flecks of white paint along the edges.

Or at least, Hal helps Silver get settled while Flint wanders off into his room with the pile of books he’s brought from the clinic and sets them down on his empty nightstand. This has been his room for more than a week now —  not that he’s spent much time actually sleeping in it — but he simply didn’t have many things with him when they had to run, so it’s still mostly empty.

There’s a grey cat dozing on his bed, but it barely stirs when he sits on the mattress and doesn’t pay any more attention to him after that.

There’s his gun, carefully stashed away in a drawer.

There’s a few clothes that Hal lent him, most of them too large but surprisingly comfortable, hanging in the closet.

There’s a small collection of pills that Howell prescribed to help with the pain in his shoulder and to ward off infection, a pile of unpacked sterile bandages and tape, disinfectant, a pair of scissors.

A couple packs of cigarettes. A windproof lighter in his pocket.

An innocent-looking grocery bag with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fine jewelry in it.

 

* * *

 

Hal pulls him aside in the kitchen as they’re starting to work on dinner.

Silver is napping in his room, the grey cat curled around his shoulder and digging his paws in the black hair spilling on the pillow. Flint had stood in the doorway watching them for longer than should have been strictly necessary, an annoying sensation in his chest that he was getting far too familiar with these days. Then he had closed the door very, very softly.

“You know you don’t have to beat yourself up over what happened to him, right ?” Hal tells him casually, throwing herbs on a plate of sausages they’re going to grill later.

“Mmh,” says Flint, not looking up from the tomatoes he’s trying to dice without getting juice all over his sling.

“I mean, I’m one to talk. But it’s not because I’m in the habit of picking up strays that you have to start doing it, too.”  
  
“Mmh,” Flint says again. If anything, Hal is very good at carrying entire conversations almost by himself.  
  
“That said, I think he’s a good kid, for someone in your line of work. I think he’s a lot like you, actually.”  
  
That makes Flint raise his head.

“What do you mean by that?”

Hal looks out the window, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“I think he’s been alone for a very long time,” he says softly.

 

* * *

 

Silver wolfs down the grilled sausages like he’s been starving for days, and Flint thinks about the hospital food and decides it makes sense.

They eat in Hal’s garden just off the kitchen, around a delicate cast-iron table that is probably older than any of them. The garden itself is not much - a long rectangle of wild grass lined with overgrown hedges and a few trees, a couple patches of wildflowers, a metal rack leaning on a wall and covered in dozens of succulents in chipped pots.

Flint feels incredibly safe there, for some reason. Maybe because it is so green and full of chaotic life, and because it feels like it is thousands of miles away from the desert that’s actually just outside the city.

The sun is setting. Silver is looking at him.

The sun is setting and they’re both alive and Hal is pouring them beers and Flint still feels the phantom weight of a dying man’s head on his lap.

He wipes furiously at the corner of his eyes.

Silver pretends not to notice.

 

* * *

 

He makes phone calls. He reaches out to people who can sell the jewelry. He and Hal monitor the police activity in the area, the local news. He gets a message from Joji telling him that he got away fine but not much else. 

He knows that Hal is anxious about Billy, who still hasn’t turned up anywhere, but he’s not worried — Billy is clever and even more cautious than Flint himself.

He helps Silver walk with his crutch around the house or the garden to get the hang of it but it’s only a couple days until the man snaps and yells at him to fuck off.

Silver apologizes later that evening. Flint just shrugs.

He drives Silver to his follow-up appointments. Howell frowns at the black van and raises his eyebrows as if saying _are you serious, man_ — but Flint doesn’t care. Hal had the plates changed days ago, and if they didn’t quite manage to get the blood stains off the leather seats, well. They’re not really visible from the exterior anyway.

He discovers that Silver cannot cook anything edible to save his life, and takes it upon himself to remedy that. Flint tries his best, but Silver’s cooking doesn’t improve much. Joshua drops by a few times and actually manages to teach him a handful of recipes, so Flint hands Hal twenty bucks and swears to himself he won't bet on anything concerning Silver ever again.

He lies awake at night, listening to Silver’s muffled sobs in the next room, unsure of what he could do. He has been making sure the man was taking his medication properly, but pills can’t eliminate all pains — his own shoulder still aches like a bitch. Yet Silver never really complains about his pain, or the hours he has to spend each day cleaning and stretching and inspecting and bandaging and re-bandaging his leg, alone in his room or in the bathroom — and Flint is very careful never to disturb him when Silver locks a door.

He works with Hal on the van, in the cramped garage that's more workshop than parking space. It's way overdue for an oil change, the carpeting is busted, and he finds sand in places it reasonably shouldn't be — but the engine is surprisingly sound. Apart from swapping out the spark plugs and the battery to be safe, and deep-cleaning the whole thing, there isn't much to do. Silver hands them tools and makes fun of them for putting any effort into what he calls a piece of trash, and Flint is inclined to agree. They should probably repaint the thing, too — but he can't quite bring himself to do it.

He thinks often about what Hal told him, and wonders how long Silver had been on his own before all this.

 

* * *

 

“Can I borrow a book or two from you ?”

“They’re mostly trash novels, you know. But… yeah, of course.”

“I know, but you never did finish reading that last one to me. And I was so out of it I missed half the plot.”

 

* * *

 

On one of Silver’s appointments, they tell him it will be three weeks before he can get his first prosthetic fitting. Three or four more weeks before he gets the actual temporary prosthetic. Possibly months before he gets a permanent one.

Flint doesn’t miss the look of panic on Silver’s face when he gets out of the doctor’s office.

They don’t talk at all on the drive back.

Hours later, he finds Silver staring blankly at the wall in his room, with all the lights off even though it has been dark outside for some time.

“I am not going anywhere,” he says, hovering in the doorway, as if that could solve anything.

Silver does not answer.

 

* * *

 

Flint goes out in the middle of the night, gets in the Voyager, and drives. He just needs to clear his head.

He manages to find a tiny shop open this late, and buys ridiculously overpriced beer from the old lady behind the counter. On a whim he also grabs a pack of condoms and lube, because _why the fuck not_ , and he feels like an anxious teenager as she rings him up with an indifferent look on her face. He pockets them and wishes her a good night.

There are a few actual teenagers outside the shop who eye him curiously as he walks out and gets in the car. He drives away before they can move, but if he’d stayed any longer he is just about certain they would have come up to him to try and buy weed.

Flint hates the damn van.

Silver is still spacing out in front of the tv and worrying his thumbnails between his teeth when Flint gets back to the house. He raises an eyebrow at the case of beer.

“Let’s get away for a while,” Flint says.

 

* * *

 

They park on a small gravel parking lot halfway up a hill that overlooks the city. During the day it’s a starting point for hiking trails, but at night it’s completely empty, a bare stretch of terrain bathed in the pitch-black shadows of the trees. There is a single streetlight that buzzes softly, on the other side of the lot.

Silver hauls himself out of the passenger seat and steps on the front bumper to sit on the hood. He settles with a sigh, his elbow propped on his good knee, chin resting on the back of his hand, looking at the city lights below.  
Flint gets the case of beer from behind his seat and hands it to Silver before climbing to sit next to him. The metal whines under their combined weight, but he doesn’t care much.

The car has seen a lot worse, after all.

Silver has already popped two bottles open with his lighter and hands one to him while patting his pockets with his free hand. Flint takes a sip and has to bite back a sigh — the beer is perfectly, blissfully cold. He presses the bottle to his forehead and watches as Silver lights a cigarette.

The smoke curls around his face and he looks like a very, very tired version of Lucifer. _Fairest of all angels_.

“That shit’s way too light for how I’m feeling,” Silver complains, raising his bottle.

Flint wants to complain that his heart is way too heavy for how he should be feeling, but he still has some self-respect left.  
  
“Yeah, you can go and find some fancy Belgian stuff yourself next time,” he says instead.

“These guys don’t even have a notion of what a light beer is, you know. It’s rather fascinating.”  
  
“Well, I didn’t want to get you so drunk that I’d have to _carry you_ ,” Flint answers pointedly. “I’ve had enough of that.”

Silver chuckles.

“Well, sorry for trying to save your life, _Captain_.”

“Please never call me that again.”

They drink in silence for a moment. Silver takes a long drag from his cigarette and throws it away, half-finished.

“You know, I thought I could walk away with my share and be free to do what I wanted.”

Flint isn’t sure what to say to that, but he tries anyway. “In a few weeks you’ll be able go anywhere you want.”

Silver sets down his bottle and leans closer to him.

“I’m not talking about my leg,” he says, all pretense of levity dropped from his voice — and kisses him.

Something collapses inside Flint’s chest.

 

* * *

 

He revels in the long, slow slide of Silver’s body against his — in the way he arches and trembles like he’s having a fucking revelation, in the tangles of curls around his fingers, in the warmth of his breath against his temple, in the way the cracked and bloodstained leather is protesting under their weight.

The windows are all fogged up, the streetlights in the distance just blurry halos of light against the dark.

Flint thinks, _we will be alright_.

He loves the damn van.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> That might be it for this 'verse for a while, until I get the sudden urge to cram all the details of actually restoring an old car into a future piece or something.


End file.
